Out of the Box

Project Gotham Racing 3

Tear around corners and leave a trail of burnt rubber across cities worldwide in this serious racing sim with total online integration.

Initial Verdict Promising

While there's less car variety than other games, the online play should more than make up for it. This will be THE racer for the Xbox.

Full review to be posted after further testing!

Editor's Note:It's GameSpy's review policy to test all online-enabled games in real-world multiplayer conditions before posting a final review score. A full review of this game will be posted shortly, once it has undergone testing in the same conditions that you'll play it in. Below you'll find our first impressions of the offline portions of the game.

A number of things set the Project Gotham series apart from your typical racing sims. For one, you've got the incredible urban environments and photorealistic car models. For another, you have the racing system itself, which gives out "Kudos" (think "style points") for awesome maneuvering. And finally, you have the deep online integration -- not just online racing, but a whole matrix of records and recorded laps that are available even in the single-player game.

Our initial verdict after playing the final version of the game on internal test networks is that Project Gotham 3 looks to take this formula and knock it out of the park. The power of the Xbox 360 is evident in the jaw-dropping environments, and the online integration is a great fit for Microsoft's improved Live! service.

Graphically, if you want to sell your friends on the Xbox 360, show them the in-game garage that you can walk around in. Natural-looking sunlight filters through skylights and glints off of the polished chrome and sexy curves of the vehicles. Peer through the car windows and you can see the dashboard, individually modeled for each vehicle. It's just outstanding.

That graphical fidelity comes into play while you're racing, as well. The game simulates how your eyes adjust to changes in light, so when you plunge into a tunnel it'll be totally dark in there for an instant, and when you bust out into the sunlight again for brief moment, the sun bouncing off of the skyscrapers is blinding. It looks great and leads to some hair-raising fender-scrapes during those parts of the map.

But how about the gameplay? The licensed cars can take minor damage, but for all purposes are indestructible (like in Gran Turismo), which can lead to unrealistic strategies like smashing into rival cars at full blast into a turn. But unlike in other racing games, there's a mechanic to discourage this: the "Kudos" system rewards you for good driving. This system is great. Points rack up when you draft behind other cars or powerslide perfectly around a corner. String multiple moves together and a multiplayer builds up, making your maneuvers worth even more. But, if you slam into a wall you lose all of your points. If it sounds a little like Tony Hawk, the comparison is valid. It's painful to see a great combo get wiped out because you smash into another car. Meanwhile, your blood really gets pumping as points rack up from making perfect turns or threading the needle between rival cars.

You get huge kudos bonuses for particularly spectacular moves, which are tagged with modifiers like "Gutsy!" "Screaming!" or (we've only seen this a couple of times) "Heroic!"